All the members of the mission shared in the manual work, and all, including Mrs. Selwyn, dined together with the students in the Hall. She was much beloved by the natives; they called her Mother Bishop, and described her as “having great grace.”
At Keri-keri, a few miles from Paihai, what was to be the Cathedral library was set up, in the one stone house on the island, which had been used as a store for mission supplies. This library was a very real joy to the Bishop, he speaks of a day in it as “a day of literary luxury” when he sat “looking upon the books, occasionally dipping into them. The very sight of so many venerable folios is most refreshing in this land where everything is so new”; and again “as a charming retreat for his wife when over-wearied with her many and varied duties.... The quiet is as unbroken as the most nervous person could desire, and in this respect entirely different from the inevitable noise of wooden buildings. Here also I may retire in my old age, which will probably be premature, and superintend my College at the Waimate without being subject to all its perturbations.... The charm of this library is that it is so utterly uncolonial. Its walls are worthy of a college. My books carry me back to the first ages of the Church. It is true that when I step outside the door I stumble over a mass of utilitarian treasures. Bales of blankets, iron pots, barrels of all kinds are the miscellaneous furniture of my ante-chambers; but within, everything that can most elevate and purify the mind is to be found. Leisure alone is at present wanting for us to use our treasures; but as the Church system is developed, and active archdeacons stationed at all the principal settlements, I hope to be able to give myself more to meditation and every other profitable exercise, that there may be some abundance in my own heart to flow forth for the benefit of my diocese.”
Material things which might conduce to the well-being of his people were not forgotten by the Bishop. There were then already sheep in New Zealand, but he found that “the Maoris did not know how ‘to transfer the fleece from the back of the sheep to that of the man.’” He was distressed to see precious wool buried in the ground because the natives did not know how to use it, and wrote to a friend in Wales to ask about spinning machines suitable for the manufacture of coarse cloth in his native school, and for a supply of knitting pins for the children.
As was natural there were many interruptions to peaceful progress. News of a conflict between Maoris and settlers at Wairan near Nelson which lead to the massacre of twenty-three settlers, gave the Bishop “the gloomiest day he had yet spent in New Zealand.” This conflict arose as usual over a dispute about land, from misunderstanding of native customs, and from the little knowledge on the part of the settlers of the native language and character. Selwyn was afraid lest news of it should give a bad impression of the natives. He himself was convinced of the absolute safety of free intercourse with them and wrote:
“We have no fastenings to our windows, even on the ground floor, and the door is rarely locked. In travelling I pitch my tent at whatever place I happen to reach at nightfall, and am always hospitably received. In the course of some hundred miles of travelling I have never lost anything.”
In 1844, the Bishop made a second long visitation of his diocese, and for the first time visited the southern island, then much more sparcely inhabited than the northern. It was not easy to get about on land; many rivers had to be forded and one of the party could not swim, so the Bishop’s air-bed had to be converted into a raft in order to convey him across the rivers. In one part of the island the Bishop was much troubled to find religious dissensions amongst the natives, some of whom had been taught by a Wesleyan missionary. He wrote sadly, “controversy has preceded truth, and as usual darkened true knowledge.” As his later policy showed, had he found a really strong Wesleyan mission established, he would not have attempted to interfere; but he found that the mission had only been roused into some sort of activity when other teachers had appeared on the field. He could not recognize that the mere fact of the residence of one missionary, entitled that one to claim the spiritual care of all the southern islands. Neither would he countenance intercommunion between Wesleyans and Anglicans as had been the custom in some parts before his coming. But his personal intercourse with the Wesleyan missionary was most friendly. He writes:
“I stayed one day and a half in his house; but I told him that I could make no transfer of catechumens; that we must hold our own.”
He saw need for vigorous work in the south amongst the half-caste population, “where the fathers and mothers have been living together for some years, I married them and baptized their children: in all twenty-five couples married and sixty-one children baptized. I must have a visiting clergyman in the Straits as soon as possible, but where to find a man fit for the work I know not.... Many of the old whalers and sealers are settling down into a more quiet life, and are to a man anxious that their children should not follow the course of life which they have led themselves.” The problems he met with on this visitation made him think much of his future plans for the diocese, seeking guidance in framing them from the first three centuries of the Church’s history.
Amongst the Bishop’s difficulties were his relations with the Church Missionary Society. Whilst full of admiration for the work of their missionaries, he would not ordain the laymen among them except on the condition that he decided the sphere of their work. As the Society refused to accept this condition, the Bishop would not ordain the catechists in their missions. He also refused to ordain any as priests who had not attained a certain standard of learning, and he waited to ordain any native till he considered him sufficiently educated. In all these matters, the Society had a different policy. They were accustomed to control their own missions from home and were not inclined to give way to a Bishop who had only come out after the missions had been well established. These and other difficulties and misunderstandings led to the refusal of the Society to rent permanently to the Bishop the wooden buildings at the Waimate, where he had set up his College.
As he could not stay at the Waimate Selwyn determined to move at once to Auckland which he had always intended to be the Episcopal See. When the Maoris in the Waimate district heard of his intended removal, there was much disturbance. Lady Martin describes the scene that followed. It was on what was called market day, when the Maoris brought their wares for sale, and before the traffic began there was school and cathechising in the chapel after morning prayers.